---
title: "October edition 🎃"
date: 2019-10-31
info: "Emilia Theme, WIP of Minimal Blog, News & Articles, Noteworthy things"
---

# October edition 🎃

Hello everybody,

as September and beginning of October was quite eventful for me I skipped the newsletter last month, but don't worry: I've got some cool things to share in this one! And if I feel like I can't share something cool in the future I might also skip a newsletter here and there because I want to keep this valuable to you. Enough with the preface, let's get to it :)

## New Theme "Emilia"

The Gatsby starter called "Emilia" was the second starter I ever created and is still one of my favourites. It was the first time I used [react-spring](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-ona53gpe-za5) for page transitions, it's minimalistic and a great template for photographers. As I like to take photos of landscapes myself I'd probably use this theme.

You can see a live preview on [emilia.lekoarts.de](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-swze6bc3-1agl) and enjoy the newly added features (compared to the original starter):

- Light/Dark Mode
- CSS Grid instead of Flexbox + Masonry grid
- Colored shadows around images
- Theme UI

I created the new design in Figma and decided to also share designs from now on! Go here to see the [design preview](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-ygh59qqv-htw). I'd be really glad to see what you create with this new theme as I'm super pumped that the new theme functionality and shadowing makes it easier for you to use it.

## Theme WIP: "Minimal Blog"

You might know my starter [minimal-blog.lekoarts.de](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-5zgagceu-ai6) and it'll be the next one converted to a theme 👍 But the design will change a bit as I want to emphasize the "minimal" more - have a look at a [preview photo](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-7wanm2b6-oyv). Once I publish the theme you'll of course also have the ability to view it on Figma. But for the time being I rather not have people seeing me late night editing on that 😜

## News & Articles

A lot has happened in the last two months so I can't cover everything, however I want to highlight and comment a bunch of stuff.

1\. [Creating your own Status Dashboard with Gatsby](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-c6ez789z-194u)

Even though it's a really short article and mostly explains you how to use/install my theme, I want to mention some key aspects how I created that theme and why that's beneficial for your end-users. When thinking about such status page theme in general you can really easily get to a point where you basically create a starter and the end-user is forced into your design, layout, and the "starter" itself. That's not how a theme should work. It was important for me that the theme only exports components and grabs its data in hooks (own files) and only my example project / starter has the final design. This way people can integrate it into their existing design or have a jump start with the starter. Please always think of customizability and re-usability when creating a theme!

2\. [Theme Jam: Prismic Power Legal Pages Theme - Allan Pooley - Gatsby Days London 2019](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-g2ab3zc7-18c8)

If you weren't at Gatsby Days or missed the video, here is another reminder :) The talk shows in a great way how Gatsby themes help your productivity and hence have more time for Schmizzle.

3\. [Theme UI Components](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-i4hp96vm-f9k)

If you know [Rebass](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-npjc2yqe-9tk) then this should feel really familiar to you. In short, Theme UI components are kinda a replacement for Rebass so feel free to change your setup. And if you don't know Rebass: It's preconfigured/pre-built components with styled-system, now here with Theme UI. So you don't have to build your own Button/Box etc. over and over again. I'm super stoked to use to in my upcoming theme.

## Noteworthy

I gave a talk about Gatsby's open source philosophy at a Hacktoberfest event. You can find the slides of the talk [here](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-onaqblqq-d1r).

Maggie Appleton did a great illustration of what Gatsby Themes are at Gatsby Days London. Have a look at the [photo](http://p.amxe.net/yh7n10br-q5aiv887-uca79cyr-1196) and be impressed by her handwriting!

Thank you for reading and see you next time :)

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